New Year brings with it goals, dreams, hopes and ambitions. One of my goals might seem a little silly to some people, but it is to eliminate the use of strange time periods from my life.

Whilst at school you learn about the standard measurements of time. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, and more. Each one of these units of time is carefully explained. Being more or less the same length no matter where you go in the world.

What they fail to enlighten us about are those odd time units commonly known as "later", "whenever", "roundtoit", "in a minute/few", "soon" and the ever popular "tomorrow".

There truly appears to be no set standard for these annoying time units. Unless you count the most annoying meanings assigned to them.

"Later."
Perhaps this refers to "I’ll do it when it’s too late to really matter." I certainly seem to have come across a few people in my life that assigned this meaning to the word.

"Whenever" might well mean "Whenever I have run out of excuses as to why it’s not been done yet." The main trouble there being, they never seem to run out of excuses.

The ever popular "roundtuit" Is this some strange tool or device. Perhaps a trade secret as plumbers and other such workmen seem to love this phrase.

"In a minute" or "a few" are popular ones for workmen. Cable companies and phone companies seem to subscribe to these odd methods of time keeping. Though their version of a minute or few appears to stretch into hours, sometimes even days. People playing computer games also must attend the same school of thought where these methoda are concerned.

Who do they think they are fooling when they say "tomorrow?" Even the smallest school child well knows that tomorrow never comes. Yet this answer is tossed out with careless abandon.

Another favorite, that I am sure everyone comes across at some point in their life is this. "Your time is precious to us, we’ll get to you as soon as we humanly can". You’ve heard it, on the phone, when you’ve been put on hold. We all know just how confusing that statement is. Perhaps what they means is "we’ll get to you as soon as we learn you won’t believe this line. You and I both know weekends or evenings are the busiest for us, but rearranging the roster would be too much like hard work for the manager. He really doesn't like work, it interferes with his golf practice. Tell you what, we’ll transfer you to customer service voice mail. Yes we know you wanted to speak to a real person, but our version of customer service and yours simply don't match. So leave us a message and we ’ll get back to you soon"

Just what is "soon" supposed to mean? As soon as I realize you’re not going to feed me until I do it? As soon as the Martians land? As soon as I turn fifty?

Perhaps I should simply accept that this is part of life? It would just help if there was an international standard for these odd time periods. At least I’d understand what I was up against.

If I stand a chance with this movement, then I have to be honest and start with myself. No more "laters", "soon" or "roundtuits" from me.

I’ll wipe this practice out.

Just as soon as I finish this cup of coffee…

Contact Terri at hischani@charter.net